Set’s day was one of finding my passion in my work once more, while realizing the things I would have to cut out or away in order to succeed.

Aset is a determined, disciplined Queen who helps the world move through successions. I will need to be determined as ever if I’m to get through the next 6 months. I’ll also need some healing…no sacrifice, cutting away, and intense passion comes without a drain in energy.

This day, Aset’s birthday, felt very special to me. She was the first Netjeru that came to me, and my relationship with her has changed over the year. It is now at its most complex, but also at, what I think, is its most genuine. I see her in myself, in strong women, in rain, and in green plants. Maker of Kings, may we all become Kings.

If yesterday’s theme was that of confidence, strategy, and diplomacy, today’s theme, for me, was that of sacrifice.

Today is also Lammas, and I did something of a slight “combo” – capitalizing on Wesir’s role as Lord of Grain to celebrate Wesir’s birth and Lammas together. It was a little odd to celebrate his birth on one hand while acknowledging the fact that he dies and is established as King in the Duat eventually in the same day…but for this moment in my life, it works. Especially given the fact that in my neck of the woods, it still is and feels very much like late summer. Its unfathomably hot and humid. Everything is crazy green…but my cucumbers are coming along swell, and other people have already harvested plenty of tomatoes. Its the peak of life for many critters and plants, and the harvests have been arriving for a while in this temperate zone.

But, the days are shortening, and the summer fruits will soon give way to their autumnal cousins. Wesir is the certainly the god of life, but there’s also a foreboding reminder playing in the background…the memory that life and death are cycles, not static states. The process of one giving way to the other. The promise of bread in a field of ripening wheat.

I am a few months away from a huge comprehensive exam, one that requires memories numerous citations and article summaries in order to create a handful of essays over the span of 6, 8-hour days. If Heru-Wer pressed me to believe in my ability to do it, Wesir pressed me to sacrifice. Specifically, the sacrifice in my time (and, honestly, at least a little bit if not more of my well-being) and efforts to studying is due. On top of everything else I have, I am to spend about 5 hours a day, each day, until mid-November studying for this exam. Its a tall order on top of a 40+ hour work week, but its got to be done.

Year in and year out, as I see it, Wesir sacrifices himself for all of us. Plants and crops are planted, sprout, bloom, and ripen their fruits, simply to sacrifice those fruits, seemingly, to other animals for food, or the ground. But that sacrifice is not for naught, because it perpetuates the species or feeds other species. Wesir was established as King of the Duat, and in the mythology, this meant “a place for the Akhu”. It meant the King (and eventually, anyone else) could live like him. I don’t necessarily believe that verbatim, but the metaphor is endearing – the old gives birth to the new; without sacrifice, little survives.

O Wesir, you who sacrifice for others, teach me to sacrifice for myself.